Chapter 2 - The Father I Was Told Never Wanted Me
Hospital security removed my mother and sister.
Brielle screamed all the way down the hallway.
“You’re choosing him over us!”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
My father remained by the door.
Seventeen years had passed since I had last seen him.
I remembered him younger.
Dark hair instead of silver.
Brown leather jacket.
Coffee in one hand.
A habit of singing badly in the car.
Then, when I was fourteen, he vanished from my life.
That was the story I knew.
He left Mom.
Moved away.
Stopped calling.
Stopped paying.
Stopped caring.
Every birthday without him became evidence.
Every Christmas card that never arrived became proof.
Now he stood in my hospital room looking at Clara with tears in his eyes.
Grant came beside me.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at him.
“You knew he was coming?”
“For about forty minutes.”
“What happened?”
“When I got home, there was a certified envelope wedged inside the front door.”
Dad answered.
“My attorney sent it.”
“To me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because my financial manager discovered an attempted withdrawal from your trust yesterday.”
I stared at him.
“The trust I didn’t know existed.”
“Yes.”
Pain medication made everything feel slightly unreal.
“Start at the beginning.”
Dad nodded.
“When your mother and I divorced, you were thirteen and Brielle was nine.”
“I remember.”
“I created separate trusts for both of you.”
“Why?”
“I had sold my construction company.”
I vaguely remembered that.
Dad had owned Mercer Commercial Builders.
Mom always said the company failed after the divorce.
Apparently another lie.
“I put four hundred thousand into your trust and four hundred thousand into Brielle’s.”
I looked at Grant.
Then Dad.
“Why would Mom have access?”
“You were minors. Diane was one of the custodial trustees until each of you turned twenty-five.”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“I know.”
“So her access should have ended seven years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Then how was money still leaving?”
His expression hardened.
“That’s what we are determining.”
My stomach tightened.
“You said you sent letters.”
“Dozens.”
“I never got one.”
Dad pulled out his phone.
Photographs.
Returned envelopes.
Birthday cards.
College letters.
Graduation packages.
All mailed to addresses where I had lived.
Some were marked REFUSED.
Some RETURN TO SENDER.
One envelope from my eighteenth birthday had handwriting across the front.
RECIPIENT DOES NOT WANT CONTACT.
I stared at it.
“That isn’t my handwriting.”
“I know that now.”
“You believed it?”
“For years.”
Dad’s voice cracked slightly.
“I thought you hated me.”
I looked at Mom’s handwriting in my memory.
The sharp D.
The long tail on her Y.
I couldn’t prove the writing was hers from a photograph.
But I knew.
“What about child support?”
“I paid every month.”
“Mom said you stopped.”
“I can show you the records.”
My hands started shaking.
Seventeen years of anger suddenly had nowhere stable to stand.
“Why didn’t you just come to the house?”
“I did.”
“When?”
“Your fifteenth birthday.”
I remembered that birthday.
Mom had taken us to my aunt’s house unexpectedly.
“She told us the pipes burst.”
Dad nodded sadly.
“I sat outside your house for almost two hours.”
I closed my eyes.
Another memory shifted.
“Did you come to my high school graduation?”
“Yes.”
My eyes opened.
There had been a man standing near the back parking lot.
Mom saw him.
She grabbed my elbow and rushed me toward the car.
She said one of Dad’s former business partners had been harassing her.
“That was you?”
“Yes.”
I started crying.
Not loudly.
Just tears.
Grant put his hand on my shoulder.
Dad remained where he was.
He didn’t approach.
That mattered.
He waited.
Finally I asked:
“Why now?”
“Because last year I learned you owned Harrison Cleaners.”
Grant and I had bought the struggling dry-cleaning shop four years earlier.
We renovated it.
Added pickup service.
Won commercial contracts.
Opened a second location.
Nothing glamorous.
But ours.
“I wanted to walk in,” Dad said.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because after seventeen years, showing up at your business and announcing your mother lied seemed like a good way to get thrown out.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Then winced.
Dad smiled faintly.
“I hired an attorney instead.”
“Why didn’t he contact me?”
“He did.”
“When?”
“Three letters.”
I had received none.
Grant frowned.
“Our mail?”
I looked at him.
Mom had stayed at our house for three weeks the previous summer after a plumbing leak at her condo.
Suddenly my stomach turned.
“She had access.”
Grant understood.
Dad continued.
“Then you became pregnant.”
“How did you know?”
“Your business posted a photograph after the local small-business award.”
I remembered.
Six months pregnant.
Grant beside me.
My hand resting on my stomach.
“I decided I would try one more time after the baby came.”
His eyes went toward Clara.
“I didn’t want to miss another generation.”
The words broke me.
Dad finally came closer.
“May I see her?”
I nodded.
He approached the bed slowly.
“This is Clara.”
“She looks like you.”
Grant objected.
“She definitely has my chin.”
Dad studied the baby.
“That poor child.”
I laughed again.
Another stab of pain.
“Please stop making me laugh.”
“Sorry.”
For ten minutes, the room became almost normal.
Then Dad’s attorney arrived.
Margaret Ellis.
Sixty.
Gray bob.
No patience.
She placed a folder on the table.
“Natalie, your father asked me to wait until you felt well enough.”
“I’m never going to feel ready for today. Go ahead.”
She opened the folder.
The trust records showed withdrawals beginning when I was nineteen.
College housing.
Medical costs.
Education expenses.
At least, that was how they were categorized.
I stared at one.
$18,500.
“I had a scholarship that year.”
Margaret nodded.
“We know.”
Another.
$32,000.
Vehicle expense.
“I drove a ten-year-old Honda Civic.”
Another.
$14,200.
Educational travel.
“I didn’t travel.”
Then one transaction made my stomach drop.
$21,000.
Brielle Mercer Educational Support.
“That’s from my trust.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Margaret looked at Dad.
He answered.
“Your mother apparently began treating the two trusts as interchangeable.”
I kept reading.
Brielle’s college tuition.
Brielle’s first apartment.
A car.
Credit card payments.
Then expenses with no description.
By twenty-five, my trust should have transferred fully to me.
Instead, documents appeared showing I had voluntarily extended Diane’s administrative authority.
My signature appeared at the bottom.
“That isn’t my signature.”
Margaret nodded.
“We suspected that.”
Grant’s face hardened.
“She forged Natalie’s name?”
“We need a document examiner before making that allegation formally.”
The attorney in Margaret refused to disappear even in a hospital room.
Good.
“How much is missing?”
“From Natalie’s trust, approximately three hundred seventy-two thousand dollars in principal and more when investment growth is considered.”
I felt sick.
“And Brielle’s?”
Margaret hesitated.
“Almost all of it.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
Brielle believed I had more money than she did.
Mom had spent years telling her Dad favored me.
That my business came from “family money.”
That I had secretly inherited more.
But her own four-hundred-thousand-dollar trust?
Almost gone.
“Does Brielle know?”
“We don’t believe so.”
Dad rubbed his forehead.
“There’s another issue.”
“What?”
“The attempted withdrawal yesterday.”
Twenty-seven thousand dollars.
The birthday deposit.
“They tried to take it from my trust?”
Margaret nodded.
“An electronic distribution request was submitted.”
“Whose authorization?”
“Yours.”
My stomach went cold.
“I was in labor yesterday.”
“We know.”
“What reason?”
Margaret turned the page.
BUSINESS INVESTMENT.
Harrison Cleaners Expansion Expense.
Grant stood.
“They used our business?”
“Yes.”
I looked toward my sleeping daughter.
While surgeons were preparing to cut me open to save Clara, someone had electronically signed my name on a request to remove nearly everything remaining from a trust I never knew existed.
Grant asked:
“How was it stopped?”
Dad answered.
“The trust’s independent co-manager flagged the amount.”
“And called you?”
“Yes.”
“Why Richard?”
“Because I remained trust protector.”
Margaret looked at me.
“That means he couldn’t withdraw your money himself, but certain unusual distributions triggered notice to him.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Mom must hate that.”
“She does,” Dad said quietly.
Then Grant’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“Our business bank.”
He opened an alert.
A new credit application had been submitted under Harrison Cleaners.
Applicant:
Natalie Mercer Shaw.
Requested credit line:
$95,000.
I stared at it.
“I didn’t apply for that.”
Grant’s face became stone.
The party wasn’t seventy-nine thousand dollars anymore.
May you like
My sister and mother had apparently been trying to borrow nearly one hundred thousand dollars using my business.
And now I wanted to know why.
